Hong Kong Hell

Mothers of six children aren’t allowed to get sick.  My mother fervently believed this, until the Hong Kong flu hit during the 1968 holiday season.

I brought two girls from Venezuela, Annie and Magaly, home for Christmas.  I think my older brother was then away serving in the Air Force, but my two older sisters were home from college, and my younger brother and sister were still living there.  Every one of them came down with the flu, my mother included, several days before Christmas.  My father and I were the only people not flat on our backs.

So there I was, with seven hacking, dripping, sweating people to take care of.  My father had many sterling qualities, but he was incapable of serving as a nurse; I could only count on him to run to the store to buy massive quantities of canned soup, ginger ale, tissues and aspirin.  Heating that soup, carrying it to seven bedsides several times a day along with the ginger ale and aspirin, picking up the used Kleenex, and maintaining some level of sanitation in the kitchen and bathrooms was about all I could manage.

Jim and Val would have been eleven then.  Both had a tendency to become delirious when they had a fever.  This time, they simultaneously turned into screaming, thrashing terrors.  So I put Valerie in my mother’s bed, ordering mother to keep a wet towel on Valerie’s forehead while I gave Jim a cool bath to get his fever down.  Then I put Jim in her bed while I bathed Val.   My mother probably had one child or another with her for the total of one hour, but she was angry about it for the rest of her life.  In fact, almost everybody was angry with me; I simply couldn’t devote any of them enough attention.  I was a failure as a nurse.

That was the only year I can remember that we didn’t have a party Christmas eve.  We must have called it off.  I do recall that everyone was well enough Christmas day to get out of bed.  My mother even cooked Christmas dinner.  But by early evening, she was sick again.  And now I was sick, too.

I didn’t get a lot of sympathy or a lot of care.  But as sick as I was, I was greatly relieved to resign my nursing duties.